Playing E.V.O: The 4.6 Billion Year Journey

[Music] [Music] today we're going to be playing some Japanese jank a cult classic RPG from 1993 about the history of life on Earth and evolution say hello to Evo the search for Eden it's a rather unique little slice of gaming history now way back when I was one of the many people went down by sport a combination of the early promises in my imagination running away of what the game would be left me disappointed I learned a valuable lesson and getting caught up in the hype but I was still left wanting a game that explored evolution as a gameplay mechanic and that led to me uncovering Evo also known as 4.6 billion years story the game covers the evolution of life from fish to early man in each era we play as a different species and explore prehistoric earth it's a fascinating unique and ambitious title with plenty to like but I've never finished it I've tried I've restarted this game at least once a year since 2008 first I got was to the Ice Age but by then I've cooled on the game and slide off of it so as this show sometimes says I'm making a video to give myself that push to finally see it through understand why it kept losing me along the way and I want to take you along with me on the journey over an absurd amount of time with an absurd premise and an even more absurd payoff it may have taken a while but I promise it proved to be worth it I'll give a spoiler warning but if you know you're animals you may see where this story is going or at the very least you think you do [Music] that may be my favorite bit of music can pose for a 16-bit system I mean right away this game has some gravitas the beauty mystery and scale of life one off is there in that music the soundtrack was composed by Koichi sturdy armor and there's a lot of good in here and because it's him that means he has a symphonic symp suite the soap is a curious one a marrying of intelligent design and evolution the banana and the hand are perfectly made one for the other brought together under the banner of Sun worship which I'm sure will annoy people in all three camps the Sun summons Gaia his daughter and tells her that from here on out every 1 billion years she will have children called life and he has a bright idea to spice the whole thing up if a creature completes the trial of life the survival of the fittest they will become her partner and join her in Eden the Sun wants a son-in-law all he has to do is win evolution I've no clue how the hell will you judge that because you can't really but still I really like this up it gets me pumped to go out there in curtatone but krokodil for thinking it could stop changing and framing life on earth as a giant competition is clever now they sell falls apart if you think about it and I already fought about it so let's just get going Gaia then welcomes us to this hell reality we're told we'll be journeying through many periods with the ultimate goal being to make it to Eden and we're going to have to travel alone it's going to be hard to evolve without procreation but I guess the Sun wants us chased good luck yeah I'm thinking I'm gonna need it and we begin in 500 million BC well it's nice to know we're gonna be turning up in the ocean of origin it seems the battle is already underway as a grizzled jellyfish welcomes us to the fight he gives us some awful advice maybe on purpose he says there's only one rule survival of the fittest then says to remember the free rules fight for survival and food only move forward never back and evolve and become strong well this is a very dangerous world isn't it almost dangerous as your [ __ ] formating out so one thing that's amusing and really frustrating for editing is the textboxes localization is slapdash across the board but these are incredibly lousy near enough every scene has sentences get cut off or an entire box just for the last word or two I don't doubt that worst text boxes exist but these are the worst I've seen it helps if you imagine every animal just searching for that word they're missing anyway back to what the jellyfish was saying in the very next stage you have to enter a cave get a hint then backtrack and leave in fact backtracking is pretty commonplace I'm not sure why I'm complaining so much considering I ate the bugger so it's not like his survival advice held water to begin with and a lot of this first chapter is just swimming the Seas getting into scrapes eating things figuring life out movement feels weighty but responsive we can DoubleTap - - which is a little awkward to trigger but it's great since like you're like a flying teeth missile and the combat is basic but enjoyable we have a bite attack a big ran and if you get a horn a point around all three of these attacks are very dedicated and all have different benefits and drawbacks each hit feels deliberate and meaty the fact there's barely iframes and we lose all control when we're whacked is a little annoying but we have more than enough health to compensate the enemies don't put up much of a fight but since the attacks feel satisfying it's not that bad which is good because you're going to be biting things a lot the creatures then drop meat you have to wait to gain Evo points and recover health wait hang on a second well sorry herbivores there's no critical hits or anything but instead we've got critical meat I like this it's like the game occasionally lets me grind less and we spend Evo points to level up this is the best aspect of the game right here so that's how we're doing it or not doing it you spend points on parts and these modify the appearance of your creature and you can get some real monstrosity going obviously it's not just a stag differences some parts take away or boss that a strength of others there's a little bit of a balancing act to it but I will say it doesn't quite reach its full potential since the game is combat heavy it's best to just prioritize damage and health and things like movement speed and defense we'll still wind up pretty strong anyways so you really don't need to put much 4 into it if you just buy the most expensive parts which takes about 20-30 minutes of grinding you will become the apex predator of your era though there are some options that are purely side grades like being big or small do you want more health what do you want to be harder to hit the amount of work done just on your creatures animations considering the variety of looks you can achieve must have been staggering the stages are strange they're more like hunting grounds that you can just pass through you're not in much actual danger especially as we start packing on the upgrades most enemies couldn't kill us if they wanted to it makes it feel like I'm just bumbling through one level just locks you into a school of fish for a couple of minutes before opening up and letting you continue unless you follow a cryptic hint you get earlier and evolve an angler horn which turns this place into dinner time I'm sad to say this is the only instance of a body part that changes how other creatures behave but hey if you're angling to get big quick this is the way to do it after swimming aimlessly for a while we do bumble into some story the seaweed mentioned that asteroid lights are trying to release oxygen to support life on land but the Carissa locky is somehow coercing them into not doing that aerated about the lack of air we storm the Carissa Lackey's cave being these self-proclaimed kings of the see these old miss named sharks aren't gonna let others get to land by the way watch this [ __ ] this fight wakes you up give the son-of-a-bitch his crown it may look simple I mean he's a bullfight boss after all but it's a tight space the edges are rough so you can get caught in them and he can just decide to halt at any point in his charge and change direction not to mention his damage is a massive step up my basically as hard as I can get in this chapter enemies were scratching me but he vaporizes my health with his absurd damaged large size and my lack of recovery I just get locked down and killed I guess that's that here comes guy yet to see me off or not she's bringing us back she asks us not to rat her out to a dad which well rats don't exist yet so I'm jumping the gun they're not that jumping or guns exist diver obviously I'm gonna take it but it's not like we're gonna have survival of the fittest if we get do-overs that's fine it's not like anyone in this competition knows what that phrase actually means maybe that's why all the creatures keep respawning guy is just too nice for this death match and she sees me a few more times before this fight is over it's a great stride in difficulty it just seems no matter how much damage I'm doing I'll eventually get flummoxed into taking a hit or two and that's all it takes you know what forget the anglers gone let's try charging him and I got my health back okay I had never noticed this in all of my years playing you know how about we just forget the horn evolving refills our health well hey this boss is pretty cheap and if we're already cheating let's go all the way mysterious time stream heals me this fight is still a bastard but now so am I so I am the rest of the world can breathe easy as the biggest baddest Carissa Lackey is defeated boss me celebratory music plays and oxygen that may all be fireworks signal our victory as we make it to Panch and we become the baddest beast on land and Gaia rewards us with an amphibian body oh well you may have saved us from death but let's call it even all right off I go Gaia gives us a brief we're now in the age of amphibians she says there should be more large plants around but something is wrong I mean hey that doesn't concern me I'm a carnivore after all the chapter starts with us eating a crystal and getting ahead the fact that sin quotations makes me suspicious and after the jellyfish I'm not sure I'm ready to trust any advice this game gives me still this is one of Evo's most fascinating moments I may need to go through the grind again and it's a bit longer this time but the gameplay is evolved along with our creature now we have to contend with jumping some like platformer elements along with stats governing the damage jumping deals and jump height increases in jumping strengths are pointed to and rewarded with insects flying overhead for us to eat with the fact insects can't be reached at first pointing to the fact that jumping is something the player can improve this chapter also introduces a day/night cycle with animal behaviour changing depending on what time it is so the gameplay got more complex along with us however once again the start of this chapter does feel aimless the stage is more like exhibits than challenges save for the small handful of mazes throughout the game this doesn't change we overhear voices from above talking about green crystals that can reverse evolution this is both for gameplay mechanic and a story conspiracy we'll be hearing about these crystals for years to come one of my favorite little scenes is meeting a school of sila fish who have dropped out of the competition and decided to just stop evolving yeah you and the crocodiles who aren't here yet and then we bumble our way through acoustical lands on a rampage until we challenged a bus to go [Music] look even with the exploit which I'm not breaking out as a first resort I can still die before I can save myself and it cost points to use this boss is a test of those new jumping skills and exploiting the game the whole reason we come to blows is he thinks I think he looks funny and I look like a miniature version of him granted I do think I look funny so he's not wrong and by the time I win it's not even true anymore by then it's just a cycle of one-sided immortal violence the elder mistakes this is are saving the acoustica from his tyranny and conscripts us into a war with the insects who have started evolving abnormally they're trying to destroy all plant life uncaring that they're going to bring the world to ruin in doing so they send that kid's dad off to treat with the be king but he never came back so let's get going yep the War of the insects seems pretty dire over at the be Kings cave it seems negotiations broke down I should point out that something I find fascinating about this story is that it treats us like the hero in all but one era we are the ones making sure the world doesn't die I don't buy that we're in it for that no morality is guiding our actions or slowing us down as I have to trigger the king bee by eating his young you have evolved strangely did you use the crystals power no but I have evolved strangely and Wow a boss that was actually pretty easy onto the desert oh hey here comes someone else with a tip the gisu head tells me I don't need to evolve any further then tells me there are strong enemies ahead I say he should evolve his trickery sadly for him he's right where he wanted to trick and wrong where he wanted to frighten that desert can barely scratch me as we march always at a queen bee and she is a lot tougher yeah this is the pattern they understood the difficulty of the stages so that before long you'll out class any standard enemy but then the boss are unbelievably difficult it's like someone snuck a boss rush into an ortho Genesis exhibit stages are less challenges as I said their hunting grounds or showcases for animals or the ongoing narratives in each era it's heavy on presentation and I think it's a cool experience but don't get comfortable it's also just that bosses can be terribly designed and our ability to move is never quite good enough to evade everything they'll throw our way and getting gummed up by one here is really all that it can take however I do appreciate that besides the exploit there is a way to lock down nearly all of the bosses and put the heart on potentially even killing them without giving any room for countering nature's cruel and evil knows that it goes both ways I mean it's either that or half-baked design and so the plants are saved and as facts we're turned into a reptile yeah call it the land before taste because we looked Opie is all help look at that expression we're already tired of Gaia doing this for us you'd think dinosaurs would be the centerpiece but it's a bit of a letdown I mentioned as good music here and there is it's just a majority of the time you won't be hearing it the ocean chapter started strong birthplace of all life it's a gorgeous track even with all the strangeness on display this music keeps things in perspective makes that period of life see mystical miraculous then as you snake your way through the caves it gets a bit darker a bit more daunting and as you approach Carissa Lackey the music gets us ready for a showdown I mean after all we've got something to fight for and the boss music is fantastic for a showdown between beasts the music here gave Eames way mostly aimless journey I have no idea what's going on on a fish for son's sake but it's beautiful then as you get to the age of amphibians I mean I guess they're harder to take seriously it makes me think a lot less of proceeding since this sounds far more laid-back far goofier the harshest thing I could say about this track is that it's like the game has lost respect for its own subject matter I mean the desert at least then had a track to fit the situation a slow creeping tune befitting an encroaching desert that we're fighting to stop then dinosaurs megafauna some of the biggest beings to ever walk the earth it sounds so daft I really dislike it I don't know why it is I don't know why they settled on this I think Kochi City ama [ __ ] AIDS dinosaurs they could have just played this track and it would have been an improvement just recycle this you think the dinosaurs would get a track to complement their size and strength this does not help me as ivory start the grind and my issue is that this track will now get remixed and used as the music for most ages for the rest of the game so as I said there is good music you just won't be hearing it most at a time but hey it's fitting this chapter is the bumbly is so far and I've already bubbled a lot we find a dad who's sad to have lost his son and he tells us to leave I try and take his mind off it but that doesn't go so well yeah thanks a continent over I find that kid getting bullied by frogs as payment for saving him I'm given a rumor about Mount brave this good deed is followed with the most morbid and difficult boss yet a standoff against the prime frog her tactic is to send a swarm of her spawn at you and it's overwhelming you've got to rush her down or you're going to get crushed under a wave of her young you just can't commit infanticide fast enough and that's the plot we reunite one family and Massacre another I can tell why I fell off this game besides not knowing about the exploit I can't overstate how much of this game is a repetitive grind I spend a long time not really feeling like I'm achieving much then a boss comes along and kicks my ass I know how volution can take a while so am I allowed to judge it yes it's not all bad this chapter does give us some new options we can now play as a biped which gives us great jumping power and I believe great a reach of our attacks [Music] we can also become a bird it does reset you to an awful form so you have to grind again and the bird has worse overall stats but not by a meaningful degree not to mention flying is for the birds it's just not that useful rats and at long last we confront the Taira sores they mentioned they've been granted power by the crystal and they're defeating me will be as easy as lifting a baby but well not with those arms it's a horde of the buggers a very slow awkward horde that can barely attack me I don't think the crystal did much for their tactics and well we can't question them about the crystal because the fight is interrupted when meteors start falling to earth Gaia walks us out of there and the age of dinosaurs comes to an end I think saying they'll speak of this for generations is a bit of an understatement but we're playing as characters with a very skewed sense of time next up the Ice Age just based on the world map the Ice Age seems like a good time but I do have questions you know I'm rather thankful to the asteroid emit Gaia didn't have time to steal our body from us so the spirits that are dinosaurs instead give us a choice to remain as we are or become a mammal why go for it man talk about class switching in RPGs this is a real class switch except mechanically not really mammals have greater defence and health along with the ability to kick something reptiles can never do they've also got a lot of parts to choose from but they're more expensive which means grinding for longer still several chapters in I like what the game gives us the option if we're tired of grinding we can opt out this does lock us out of the ascent to homo sapien but humanity's always been a mixed bag I want to talk about the game's writing quickly not only the text box is rather poor what's in the missive much grander nobody says die in this game everything is defeated now this game is trying to be kid-friendly evil presents a fantastical and simplified but still harsh account of life on earth though I love the use of defeated hair in particular because it's referring to the KT extinction event it's as though it was a fair fight between the dinosaurs and a very fast rock alongside that it's just an awful translation with very ropey dialogue and awful formatting a lot of animal names changed for no good reason it's not like they've been made much simpler to understand or pronounce and I've been pronouncing them wrong anyway obviously outside of the very basic timeline of life on Earth this game isn't intended to be educational well I can imagine this sparking a kid's interest it's just after that they won't have the right names for most things to look them up and in the next cavern over we find some dinosaurs still well not kicking obviously but very much alive it's a sorry state of affairs they're scared of me some tiny rat cat thing we fight plenty of dinosaurs the world over actually they're apparently dying out but they seem to be getting on just fine one thing I will praise about this game is the animal variety I have complained a lot about the grind and the aimlessness but it is definitely alleviated by the sheer amount of animals on display many of which have different behaviors different attack patterns and different strategies for dealing with and this does go to the boss fights as well every single one really is its own animal except for the king and queen bee but hey that's only fair this does wind up feeling more like a testbed for enemy behaviour than a curated game play challenge but at the very least it makes the world seem diverse and a life which is quite valuable even in this chart to where they are reusing dinosaurs and I mean hey they can get away with it it's fine because there is still plenty of new life to consume along with them and part of that new life is the Yeti most everyone we meet is scared to death of the thing some have tracked entire continents to get away from it likely unaware the Beast is trapped behind an immovable ice block being the big ferocious bastard we are we want that out the way eventually we make it to question mark we may have named the domains of various animals but this ice pillar is befuddling us and we're kidnapped and taken to a flying fortress filled with intelligent bird men this section is unique it's a really annoying platforming teleport amazed that's really not a whole lot of fun in and of itself but it does present the one scenario in the game where I felt like I had to evolve in order to adapt for circumstances what a novel concept owing to the long jumps I sacrifice my health and defense in order to evolve a body capable of making these leaps now the tragic part is none of this was actually necessary it turns out you just have to back into a certain teleporter which is incredibly [ __ ] annoying but I was still left over for in a game about evolution this is the one time I thought it got evolution I wish we had a version of Evo that understood that evolution is about adaptation to environment imagine sections where you could scale down your character to take shortcuts through cramped spaces make yourself light enough to cross fragile ground or hate on the opposite end of the spectrum maybe get heavy enough to smash through something it would vary up the ways you had to evolve and make the game less repetitive now granted with the game as it is it may add to the grind and likely be rather annoying as you would need more points for the more frequent changes I mean you can save bodies and spend green crystals to return to them but that's a limited resource if you could buy parts and then freely return to them it would encourage experimentation but that would not cut down on menu usage and these menus are functional but clunky and if they didn't fix the health exploit this game would break more than it already has in Evo all you really need to do all the time is buy the most expensive parts and what's funny is the lime suggesting goes against the story which treats evolution is something that has an end point where we're the best we can be evolution isn't something that actually has a pinnacle what survival of the fittest means is the most fit for environment it's about adaptation so we couldn't really win but pay to cut back a second I get that's not what this story is about but I think there's a lot of gameplay potential unrealized because of it anyway we eventually make it to the bird King and the power of the crystals lets him shoot plasma [ __ ] son this fight is a nightmare luckily you get juggled so high that even on zero health I can get out of it that's right I'm evolving beyond death zero hit points means no thing to me because I've evolved before I hit the ground this whole competition really is a sham and I sort of love that the story becomes the fast along with it every village is a big old cheetah because they're using the crystals to advance their own evolution and gain an unfair advantage now Gaia doesn't care for that one bit and it's present it as evil but I can't really pick grudge them because you know I was I'm cheating you not only the same way but several others and happily so it's really just the people who are organizing this competition have no clue what's going on and it's happening right under their noses you know what another tact I think Evo knows this here's some creatures who say using the crystal is wrong and at they'll evolve the right way what do they do they spend all day head-butting each other this is what the game really thinks the people who play fair now for all of my complaints about the premise I do like it like I said it got me excited I also think it got tossed out pretty much immediately I feel more like a secret agent getting dropped into different time zones to make sure everyone is playing by all the rules I brake rather than a participant in a planet-wide showdown now each chapter does present their own little animal vignettes and the Daffy story is keeping me entertained as I pick it but I'm not too big on the fact that it always comes around to these bloody crystals so in trying to get to the Yeti we collapse port bird man and that really breaks the ice this fight is a lot more straightforward but he's so fast he can just turn you inside out in moments then I figured out if I just stand still and keep kicking he can't really get past that his wife on the other hand has a counter this is why you become a mammal reptiles can't kick and even with the exploit this fight is horrific they can kill me faster than I can cheat I have to keep them in my rhythm but if I miss time it or I just get unlucky I'm on the back foot trying to get them with the back foot alright we bring them down and boy do I feel like a big hero now no one has anything to fear and then their kid comes out and starts crying over his dead parents and Gaia sensing an awkward situation decides to just send us ahead ten million years sorry bud welcome to the final lure of the game the dinosaurs are extinct mammals at a dominant form of life and hey the world's taking shape we're still a mammal and pretty much the top of the food chain or at least as far up as the game has allowed it promised we can become man but I haven't found an option yeah there's no way for the gameplay to really go so the story decides to pick up the slack by packing in as much insanity as it can in its final hours we begin with a tour of the Americas eating our way across the continent in another set of dioramas it turns out Grizzlies aren't that dangerous we meet the last remaining dinosaurs hiding away in the forest and in return for sparing their lives they'll tell us about these strange animals that evolved with the face of a cat and the body of a rabbit well weird ok for those in the audience screaming at me that was a very awkwardly phrased hint for something that I didn't quite get yeah I'm an ass we then assault a cave belonging to the monkey human tribe and you better believe these guys were corrupted by the crystal in some way this maze can actually be pretty dangerous it's like we're playing a stage in a video game the monkeys have a bunch of attack patterns and traps and at the end of the cave we find the descendant of those Yeti and they're still mad at us ten million years later so we never actually solved the Yeti problem in fact we may have made it worse that's not the craziest part after defeating him we find a flock of flightless birds they stand around ruins in the desert look up at the sky and crying over the destruction of Fort Birdman crunches carry in this reality the bird I speak to says it was removed by some strange force I say I keep my mouth shut but that's not quite true we then wander to the final ocean Gaia tells us to go save the whales from the Rogen's no it's good to see the seal of Fisher still at it and the carissa Lackey stuck - they are under water guns wait one nice thing about the kick is that it applies gravity to enemies we defeat the rogue on four easily and the king whale fax us in his underwater palace [Music] you this clears the clouds over Africa and then the game hopes we can figure this out Africa is a bit of a boss rush every creature here has sworn fealty to her being in the north with the crystals power he gave them back their strength saved them from extinction or just gave them a place to be he's done more for others than I have she is or not the new queen bee is quite respectful Purdue e2e mister not let us pass yeah that's understandable the Taira source say they were made a very important ancestor the translators missed a trick by not calling them very important predators and up in the north we make it to the entrance to Eden oh here it is and it's a cave man sorry ik remained standing in our path he belonged to the monkey human try but they shunned him for having less hair and being smarter no sounds can see it to me he can smash you off the stage he gets his health back from this you don't this attack also is pretty good range so I found the safest way to beat it was to basically get into a loop where I have to take damage to deal damage but at least he can't just reset the fight inside the cave leading to Eden we have to traverse a maze filled with Dino people they say they have to seal off the crystal because it's dangerous and even is closed until then and being our usual selves we start eating everyone in sight while they try and keep us at bay with key blasts and by summoning slimes that's fine the more the merrier also I've had this story a bit wrong this wasn't so much a battle to reach the apex of evolution no no no it was worse it was a race to reach this cave that likely didn't exist until very recently the last several hundred million years could just get [ __ ] thanks for all your effort in this life and death relay the winner is gonna be this [ __ ] who just got to skip massive chunks of time and as we get near the room where they stored a crystal it violently explodes and by jumping into the energy stream we're sent to a strange of a worldly chamber it's here we confront bowl box but strongest creature in the world a caveman who ate the crystals and mutated into some strange giant amoeba thing the entrance to eaten is actually right behind him he made it here first but Gaia shut the door amen and so it's time for a showdown between the world's two biggest cheaters he froze out crystals that spawn some new creatures it's a pretty inventive final boss actually with some recolors alongside new foes and some remixed enemies that really caught me off guard and between fights we have to ignore on his appendage it's a big drawn-out fight and rather difficult rife with many of the problems of the former ones but hey I came home with a full stomach so it's all good and with ball box defeated I think Gaia just rushes to end the competition it's been a complete shambles and that's it we're still more human the Sun grants us intelligence which makes the whole journey so much better in retrospect everyone thought we were saving the world but for us it was just an all-you-can-eat buffet and wondering what the hell we just got up to we walk off into an unknown future and on Mars the Martians regret interfering with life on earth and vowed to only step in if we need help well I'm really glad I made you look yourselves in the mirror the credits roll the main theme plays and it's still beautiful but I am left more than a little bit befuddled in all of my years not finishing this game that's the way I expected it to wind up even with stuff like the giant queen bee that we would go on to murder a giant amoeba let's face it was stronger than us but I look prettier so I get to win that's not where I thought it would go in the end I'm glad I made it to Eden but it took years and I can get why it's an intriguing mixed bag of a game where everything bad is met with something good and everything good can be bad when I looked at another way it's a unique spin on the RPG you're leveraging a gamified concept of evolution in really charming ways as you deck out a monstrosity but it's a grind and one you'll need to repeat several times optionally several more but there are so many unique animals along the way to alleviate that repetition the damage system is busted and the bosses of brutal but we can exploit evolution to heal and it's really rich the villains are all those cheating the system while Gaia keeps reviving us behind her dad's back and well when all exactly squeaky clean besides the premise is absurd and trips up a more fascinating and four full game before it could even begin but then it barely follows up on that premise anyway the translation is amateurish and poorly written but the story is so out there that doesn't seem like there's much to take away from anyway and the soundtrack it's great so let's spend most of the playtime hearing it is worst Evo may be far from the best game I'd argue it's more interesting than enjoyable but I struggle to think of other ways to spend hundreds of millions of years in eight hours there were a few things I did miss like the dragon crystal that would have come in handy and in the same place as a bunch of free points to let you skip a big chunk of grinding as a bird there's also mermaid form that's sneaky and it turns out those last dinosaurs were giving me a very awkwardly worded hint on how to become human I like hidden things like this it makes me think oh hey there was more to this game than I knew about it just makes it feel much bigger in retrospect so to become a human we have to evolve a rabbit body and then cat-like jaws and then a new option will unlock in the body menu to evolve a rom or focus body [Music] after that you are locked into this path all you can do is change your size and devolve further I'm going to be honest I wanted to stop evolving here we've peaked before peeking man maybe not and here we are we finished the ascent to man his defense health and damage are great but his attack for some reason no longer has any knock-back which makes combat incredibly dangerous plus there's so few level of options it's incredibly expensive to use the evolution exploit so in the end humanity isn't worth it now on to the most important thing I missed this game is an evolution of another a remake of a PC 98 title that never made its way to the West but it got a fan translation in 2016 and there's a healthy PC 98 emulation community there's a world of old Japanese computer games steadily becoming more accessible so hey let's follow up the first SNES title I've ever beaten with the first PC 98 title I'll ever play I'll put a download in the description so if you want you can play along a small warning before we go ahead with this game for anyone who is sensitive to flashing lights or discordant audio this game features an annoying amount of Beaufort times and they will be demonstrated in the video at points this time we open with a disclaimer which off the last next time well it seems about right but this is odd because what follows is a really good opening crawl concisely explaining the Big Bang the formation of our solar system and the events leading to our planet being able to sustain life [Music] it then follows our development from a unicellular organism to a fish this is all delivered beautifully yet clearly so following the disclaimer this intro is more educational than the entirety of search for readin the manual even has a full word from the game's writer science fiction author Kalamata Chiaki it's a rather thought provoking statement of intent about the message of Evo asking if after 4.6 billion years of evolution could things be different are we the correct beings to stand here it's a nice message and kalamata hopes the after playing the game will appreciate our existence a little bit more hope that this game is the one with a disclaimer maybe the other trusted the audience to not need one the story opens of us washing up amongst two school of fellow fellow deuce the other fish rush off to tell the Elder when we awake mom I'll get around for them there's a few creatures here to chat with first yet this is now a top-down game at dizzyingly fast I checked over footage this is what it's like either that or we're all wrong even a light tap of a directional key will shoot you off it's nuts so I'm lightly tapping my way everywhere it's the only way to be controllable Hey all of these creatures are named correctly unlike last time where they were scared of getting sued by claw dosa Lackey and the girls are into us yeah I'm a looker and I'm called a rake over it speak of the devil and they shall come I was guilty of it last time but you guys are really ahead of the curve on your sayings but then how many ways can you translate the owner says we turned up here beaten and battered before collapsing and we're warmly welcomed so I keep Chang making myself known when a flash makes everyone in the village paranoid and violent the owner blames us but before he can attack one of the girls comes to our defense he gets a grip on himself but still I'm sure if we're to blame asks us to leave as we're about to head off that fellow does girl says she sends his great power in us and a pop-up says that unbeknownst to us the fella to see would be swept away and besides just giving us a safe place to get used to this movement the game really could have stayed here and not much would be different that was a very economical destruction of the peaceful RPG village now that we're out in the wild everyone's pitching for a fight theory of evolution uses a more scientifically accurate form of conflict the turn-based foul hey this music gets a promotion in the other game here it's just the standard encounter track could God the other fella just a way tougher than me I have no great power rifle all my points in looks you [Music] I guess I'll have to bully jellyfish and hope I can evade everyone else so I was struggling at the start there's no consumables and while there is a recovery move I figured it wouldn't be good alone later on it's just as busted as evolving health more so actually being an actual handle on combat isn't that hard it's incredibly simplistic do attacks and the enemy will probably die first unless you bungle leveling which is also hard to do special attacks exist but I think these exist more to add flavor to the animal combat rather than a great deal of mechanical death they cost a small man enough to use and can I purchase steel damage usually not much more than a standard attack or apply a small handful of status effects this is an smt this is not a game of maintaining buffs and debuffs just mashing attack for the most part works I use specials just to see the flavor tag store because I felt guilty I wasn't trying to explore the mechanics a certain point it does become faster to spam specials but that won't be for hundreds of millions of years if an enemy has better stats you can actually just use recover and steadily bring them down here's the thing recover takes two turns but you heal on both of them and I never encountered a single foe who can out damage the amount you heal not overall on either turn so again recoveries busted they carried that feature forward you defeat creatures and you're given Evo genes which I'll spent one for one on the Evo chart I really like the Evo chart again it's simple but this is good simplicity in that once you get it it's easy to understand but it's actually rather playful and ties into a handful of other systems in logical and interesting ways you have four stats that have effects in both battle and the overworld this time we're playing as different animals each block on the Evo char is another creature and what creature you're playing as has no bearing on stats so you can wind up playing as the same creature several times getting progressively stronger each go around different creatures do have access to different specials but for now this is not important there's two forms of evolution horizontal and vertical we've wisdom and endurance moving you left on the Evo chart and attack and vitality to the right eventually one of the stats will take more points to fill and by filling that one out you can evolve vertically moving you to the next set of creatures with higher upgrades [Music] hey what's this [Music] you can involve yourself into a generic dead-end and get a bad ending the manual touts that there are 47 of these and encourages seeing them all this may sound great or terrible to you I think it's great I should mention this game is more forgiving the gaia willow saves at every evolution and besides some short set pieces you can save whenever you want when you get a bad end you'll pop back into the evo chart menu with your points refunded it knows these bad endings are for fun and doesn't penalize getting them I did not expect this level of convenience for a 1990 title and they're a great little resource showing you the ways animal species can die off in comedic fashion becoming too specialized for their niche having no competition changing environmental pressures but they can't keep up with and so on search readin did have bad endings certain bosses would ask for you to side with them and that gives you something similar but not as interesting and these would put you back to the start of the level so with evolution accounted for it took 35 million years to cross the second screen of the game I'm by no means a speed runner once again this chapter is fairly aimless we're wandering the sea and getting into scrapes we spend a few million years navigating a cave at one point we run into a dead end but luckily a meteor saves the day eventually we do run into her we find Gaia she tells us our fates are intertwined and that we'll meet again millions of years from now at the coast when we do find her she's ready to evolve us into a tetrapod a group of fish sit around studying her light with some hesitation saying that it's for guys chosen one one of them decides the brave yeah guess not guy is a little different this time around well this coelacanth ain't givin up on evolution a tree welcomes us to Pangaea and as an Ichthyostega we're roughly 365 million years in the past this game doesn't really mention dates or BC or anything it froze the baby out with a baptismal on that one what's more interesting is that stats just keep linearly rising between chapters so even at my weakest right now I could batter anything in the sea which makes sense I am the fish roof this time around the game just keeps the underwater track going that track I disliked in as many variants are gone and this just works a lot better for the games more grounded tone I wander into a nearby cave filled with friendly act by austega they tell me their young went self in search of the flower of evolution but have yet to return the mood is dour with many having decided to give up on evolution entirely meanwhile this show just talks about the Houston not to run now walking on land a lot of how judgemental he is about it now besides the fact that euston Opteron used to be wrongly depicted as moving on land and if i may be playing on that or just unaware it's false I also think this ties into another facet of the Evo chart vertical evolution represents the passage of time as we go down the chart all species go extinct our new ones take their place with enemies spawning in our row and the ones around us it's a diegetic dynamic enemy scaling system the timeline presented is not terribly accurate the same row may fluctuate tens of millions of years here and there and you can go down the chart and wind up playing as creatures that would have actually died out sooner if feels like they went with what made for an interesting growth over accuracy and only got things really right at the start and the end of each chart one thing fear of evolution got me doing that search for you didn't is research whenever we evolve we get an animal factoid and we get told what era they inhabited between this and the intro it actually got me curious to do some digging I mean nothing deeper than Wikipedia but hey it's something story-wise I think this is really cool it ties into a theme present in both games but actually delivered on here say hello to this group of folks in each era we've run into more or less the same group about their descendants over millions of years they're always chasing some rumor that will help them speed up their evolution in some fashion but best they're wasting their time but was it winds up backfiring spectacularly on them the vertical evolution system and the scaling difficulty of enemies on the Evo chart encourages spreading your stats out evolving slowly and with balance rather than rushing or cheating the process if you just force vertical evolutions the animals you face will likely be stronger than you in some way but if you go slowly and surely you'll not only see everything on the chart you'll stay on top of the competition it's funny this theme is kept in search for Eden but there it's just a vestigial element of the storytelling that no longer works and yes this is a cool idea but it adds to the already healthy dose of grinding that needs to be done okay for that in a second but let's go check on those Scouts [Music] her tiles certain biomes hurt to travel and God so much of this game is spent taking damage in game and out even is over the course of the game less and less deals damage it remains common and is more annoying than anything else naturally there are also healing tiles which means it's often a case of stopping and starting or just camping a healing spot while grinding so you're never in any danger at all huh rejuvenating and in a cave we find those scouts all but one dead and that one isn't going to last long he asks us to tell his mother he's fine as we head outside there's a cloud of proto phasma headed north and after we make it back we find the tribe massacred by the swarm we tell the dying mother her child is fine and she passes away peacefully search for Eden had oddly dark moments but they always came across as more funnier than tragic fear of evolution pulls them off a bit bear it sometimes contrast these moments with dark humor well and the fact that not everyone likable we meet is going to get wiped out stops it from being bleak trying to head further self is a pain there's a large stretch of desert that saps my health and the enemies have gotten tougher I wasn't evolving in a very balanced way yet and I still hadn't realized that recover was busted so while I'm stuck here I'm grinding to break through here's the thing we do need to vertically evolve certain story events are gated behind evolutionary progress and each chapter ends with us completing the chart the grind is a necessity and you're punished if you try and rush the process the battle gameplay doesn't change in any way until very late in the game new eras a new Evo chart just means we're back to basic special moves and as we go down the chart they open up again mechanically mostly the same but with different names and flavor texts the game doesn't really get more difficult as it goes along but chapter to chapter it resets the complexity going from brain-dead to simplistic each time the combat in this game is a bread sandwich there's just nothing to it and owing to this in the grind the manual even suggests turning up the tech speed so you can just mash through combat faster this does fix part of the problem but it does make another issue worse [Music] many special attack noises which UN enemies throw out will interrupt and reset the battle music it can get cacophonous and the faster speed just makes it even more chaotic luckily there's another way to grind just move at random intervals we get hit by natural disasters these do piddling damage and pay out a good amount of Evo genes the manual says it's like hitting a jackpot yeah getting caught in an earthquake it's like I've won the genetic lottery so as the game went on and my patience wore thin I just walk back and forth hoping to get caught in a volcanic eruption once the Kapton a chapter is hit the fights and accidents are nothing more than delays there are Gaius Hart scattered in some mazes and these payout Evo genes but that's not gonna let you skip all that much grinding then come next chapter it starts over but the health bar zoom out and the numbers get bigger so it really doesn't feel like anything has changed and that's pretty much all the RPG elements covered I'll bring up any new gameplay as it arrives now you know what we're contending with on this journey let's keep going theory of evolution is far more story have you been searched for readin a lot more complex far higher aspirations but it's also far better written as we head south things start going that way we realized the desert is spreading killing the plant life it may be the bloody insects again but the proto phasma started off to the north in fact they never come up again we come across the plant claiming to be the flower of evolution but I don't buy it we're still it's blocking our path nearby we overhear those folks I mentioned they are also annoyed by the deception their plan to get past it stinks but that's just what we need there's something in the great March that scares the flower we follow them over fall into a swamp and the stench that clings to us is so bad it kills the flower this maze is weird to me the entire left side of the map is an exit and at some point we have to skirt along the left side so the greatest hazard here is our character going a step too far over an invisible boundary and deciding to just leave in this game a step too far can begin from a good few meters away beyond the flower is a large portion of map sprawling in all directions but for now we need to head to this forest neighboring a great desert it's here that we find Gaia she's the real flower of evolution having taken the form of a plant from the future to inspire the local flora with its beauty this comes off as insanely vain to me and I doubt she has any idea how many people have died misinterpreting the rumors she begs us to stop the desertification we're pointed to a strangely shaped Mountain in the northwest causing it so I head out and get lost possibly for millions of years here's why to get to that mountain in the northwest we need to go to the forest guardians in the east not like know that but to get to the guardians in the east we need to head to the southern end at a map navigate to a glowing rock that teleports us beyond a mountain range then the forest Guardians point us to a big precarious rock to knock over they also ask if I've heard the legend of when the golden planet saved us from the red one no that's news to me I tracked down the rock and knocking it over floods the desert decades then past so I don't feel bad about getting lost for 20 minutes afterwards until I finally discover they opened a passageway in the mountains yeah this game isn't quite as straightforward Eden was [ __ ] easier to find than this the strangely shaped Mountain is a pyramid we somehow read a sign warning us that the evolution rush system can't be used by unapproved individuals and luckily we find an approved alien corpse up top and he has a radio on his person well we overhear an argument warning that the Lunarians in the fourth planet walk the path of destruction and someone is getting deceived by lord lucifer okay so with that jolt of weirdness out of the way let's step back to the intro and that forward by Kalamata how it got me thinking how it was setting the stage for a mystical story of life on Earth well that forward is followed by a four page timeline following the rise and fall of the venetians the Martians various interplanetary Wars the rise and fall of Lunarian civilization and all of it orchestrated by the devil as she either devours or corrupts life the timeline ends as our journey begins with the devil arriving on earth the fella to see turning violent that was her doing well good job elderly fella d'azur doomed us all this game tricked me it load me into a full sense of security by seeming more grounded and a little bit more thoughtful but then dialing me insanity far beyond anything in search for Eden while remaining more coherent at the very least in this plot rather than a son sponsored bough Royale we are Gaius chosen life form a being that exists alongside the Earth by eating Gaia and making sure life for Ives and hey considering this game doesn't have the time transcend our being experiences all of life we may already be the longest-lived being in video games this is a much better setup in a lot of ways it gives the player a far more understandable idea of their role in all this I have a much clearer Drive but basically every point in the story which is ironic considering I spend a lot longer lost and the thing is unlike search for Eden which feed you the premise off the bat theory of evolution doesn't totally spell out who you are right away but it's still a lot easier to follow it's funny the bow Royale aspect in Eden is in a way clever by Framing evolution as a competition but it also winds up muddying the story I still like this out more owing to it being much more absurd but it never delivered and often fell aimless I think I've realized that it's because they're still using the plot progression from theory of evolution so the sap has changed but not the structure and they no longer support one another the structure is another vestigial part of the storytelling plan theory of evolution made me understand search for Eden more but also made it make less sense I just love that a remake of a game about evolution couldn't adapt for its own circumstances bowel the way we take a gem from the alien corpse and use it to shut down the desert vacation machine guy revolves us into a say Moria and we set off into the third chapter the trees promised that for our help now in the future they'll aid us by becoming cold cheers lads could this tale get any weirder it probably can it's in this chapter as we start going through the Permian but a lot of fate creatures start filling up the chart they don't have an entry just a disclaimer they're so mysterious that we don't even know what they non-existent Lee did on the bright side we save the Lunarian up on a mountaintop he hands Lucifer and tells us to head east to help our evolution Cheers we ain't spend a large portion of this chapter roaming the land looking for a rumored fountain of evolution you better believe those folks are also on the lookout and the plot takes a backseat is hey that's Italy time for a little stop off in Europe or well what will soon be Europe the Iberian Peninsula isn't here yet so no holidays in Spain but on the bright side most of France is also missing whoo boy you are not going to get on oh I could stand anywhere on earth and say that Iceland is blocked off by rocks and the rest of the continent by a network of mountains but by cutting through the bay a block of Scandinavia we're able to see the scenic maze of Central Europe we eventually find the ruins where the fountain of evolution sits surrounded by the unfortunate beings who drank from it they don't look to be doing too well if we partake repeatedly we're condemned to a more popular franchise game over so that was a bust as we head outside we're confronted by a strange voice from the depths of the earth [Music] want to see me wander blindly for a while nearby we speak to Gaia she tells us that was the devil or as she calls herself Lucifer the false god we see what she had in mind she's blocking out the Sun Gaia herds the animals into a shrine to protect them excuse me out the way don't mind me chosen one coming through sadly these animals are peaceful so I can't just smack them out the way and so nemesis blocks out the Sun a majority of life on Earth dies and the survivors migrate south those that survived got a lot more confident as the life rebounded with the dinosaurs [Music] well not only the Dinos confident but so is the music that's a lot better right off the bat obviously the game share composition so it's the same good music just on worse hardware but it uses the music a lot better that aside this may be my least favorite chapter it's not only where the repetition really sets in but it's where fear of evolutions worst elements hits peak with nothing to balance it out I've alluded to it before but this game is a maze instead of boss fights we have labyrinths these labyrinths are filled with teleport puzzles in a game web basically every part of the map looks the same running water and push a tiles that don't stick out from the background and naturally has its the deal damage the worst part funnily enough is just trying to turn corners yeah these are cramped spaces the corners where we can walk and not smooth so just taking a 90-degree turn has never been this daunting somehow in a top-down game where we move around on foot I am struggling to round a corner now there is a saving grace these tend to be very short and while annoying they're never really dangerous which is actually worse in a way it's less exciting more tedious issue is once we've done a maze that means we're back in the overworld the biggest maze of all a puzzle of flags in this chapter and elder warns us of a cave containing a creature that fell from the heavens by now I'm completely jaded I don't trust anything anyone tells me but this is a kindly old reptile who stalks my ear off my head to that cave and it turns out to be an ancient Lunarian lab filled with flame geysers in any other game these would be a cinch here I burn to death I hadn't evolved in a while so I'm a ways back and I can't figure out the way back to that cave I am once again totally lost and it turns out it's because the path I took to get there has closed shut I have to go and talk to the descendants of those forest Guardians this scene doesn't advance the story they just mentioned feeling like they know me and the forest gives me thanks for a handful of genes for some reason this action moves mountains the first time I was headed to the lab I just did this but forgot to do it again off to death this game is a linear set of flags that arbitrarily and not always clearly modify the overworld you're not always pointed to them and they will be off in all directions back in the lab I once again for the first time yeah I know I said have to adapt for circumstance I pump points into stats that make me move slower on the other side of the lab we find a golem it says we'll take on Lucifer and dies peacefully on a nearby terminal we find a message being beamed into space on a loop telling other lunarians that there's a future for them on earth and that they shouldn't fall for Lucifer's tricks again to divert for a moment we finally have a special slot move that matters if your creature has a top slot attack the game speeds up for a second this does insane damage I'm equally amused and disgusted as I roam the earth mashing rats into paste with my head crest right back to the maze I climb into a Pteranodon village for some reason and with his dying words the elder tells me of a prophecy that the world will end and I need to go to the southern continent and tell Terran knowing he'll believe him there are other people in the village but they stopped listening to the Elder turns out doomsayers are older than time immemorial elsewhere we're told about the Lucifer Tyranno a once weak being who signed a pact with Lucifer to become strong once I find a way to the southern continent I need to find a way to dig into his cave I assumed I had to evolve into a burrowing creature nope so I am once again blind eventually on another continent I discover that behind this village and some way up the coast is a clearing where we find those folks now a weak group of mammals getting steadily killed off they decide to hide in tyranno's cave and this opens up the way in the cave we come face to face with Tyranno and he's actually pretty friendly having gotten free of Lucifer's control he's just happy to have a visitor but I don't know if this is the vibe they were going for and this scene is very well written or just that my trust has been thoroughly eroded I spent the entire time we were talking on edge certain that he was lulling me into a false sense of security before I get eaten but no he lets me pass he's good to his word and outside we run into Lucifer Soros and even bigger bastard and this one's still Lucifer's for all he won't let me pass no but I'm sure why I need to there's that's just a pixie behind him I'm away might get ready for a boss fight but no that's not happening Toad's I have to go and squeal to Tyranno fat bastard he hasn't realized he's been deceived by Lucifer yet see if you can catch this cutscene what little dizzy he asks Lucifer Soros to let us pass but it doesn't work and the to come to blows landing mutual kills on one another Tyranno seemingly contend to have helped a friend in death and we come face to face with Marilyn Monroe playing the role of Lucifer she claims to have made the universe and offers us a chance to work for her well after cleaning the spit off of tyranno's corpse I turn it down since it's a rather weak ending Lucifer doesn't take rejection well and says next time we meet we'll disappear forever we then cross a giant ocean I'll spare you oh no guys crying well my eyes are red too Lucifer's summoned the king of Terror she collects herself and tells me to once again gather the creatures to Shepherd them to safety again this takes a few someone intuitive steps to do but luckily they're all in a confined space for once damn it guy why did you put the shrine behind another maze and as we hunker down were evolved into Pteranodon Oh king of terror it just hit me and Lucifer assured in her victory buggers off into space sure the world is dead a series of slides follows the ecological effects of the impact species dying out an ice age but life marched on because theory of evolution seems to be very Pro natural disaster so we once again find ourselves on the cusp of mankind and much like last time this chapter goes a little bit bonkers it starts saying Gaea tells us that life progressed while she healed her wounds you can't keep a good guy down now our job is to go out and amass the wisdom necessary to lead the creatures of this planet sounds good then I start evolving and things seem a little off so I started off as Tyranno dawn and I'm fighting monster tyranno's now I put them down to Lucifer's leftover influence but then I've never heard of this come through dinosaur I'm pretty sure I would have but it has an entry it's not flagged up as fake I talked to a friendly play epiphysis about a mammoth under attack by saber-toothed Tigers well all of those things are real but here I am being a Kohima Tempest and disturbing the fabric of reality this goes on for awhile I become a dinosaur bad thing then slowly and surely become more human shaped until I hit home Oh Dino erectus he looks as confused as I do so are you ready for my favorite creature real or fake ever I'm sure when Kalamata asked if the evolutionary path we're on was the right one he asked because he knew it was the wrong track and it's because we never became homo Dino sapien this is the peak of evolution we never saw I love this guy so I made an assumption about what happened here the Evo Chart in this chapter is split in two in the last chapter mammals were on the left and reptiles on the right so by ending this chapter as a t-rex we've gone down a speculative path where it was reptiles who took the place of man which is an interesting [Music] okay never mind I'm a goddamn Goblin I also run into worms elves and gnomes I wasn't aware these creatures shared a common ancestor in the bloody Tyrannosaurus Oh in this chapter as we get into more intelligent species the strongest special move in the game unlocks throwing rocks it turns out against a very fast rock there's no such thing as a fair fight yet throughout this chapter we're interacting with real creatures like Australopithecus and the yay that's because the side of the chart when not on features mammals leading up to Homo Sapien this chapter is split into historical and fantasy versions turning one of the most pivotal points in our coming into being very very strange because well spoilers either way we become human also just to repeat a gag that's gotten more absurd due to linear stats this means a goblin could body every single dinosaur to ever walk the earth easy I like that meanwhile on the other side thanks to story events being blocked by vertical evolution an ape can't climb up a vine [Music] this chapter does have a neat gimmick Gaea asked us to amass wisdom through picking up a bone to defend of mammoth we learn to use tools a tribe of herbivorous primates asked us to scare a band of violent carnivores into submission so we scare them with fire got the mace to scare the carnivores is awful you have to evade them not because they fight you but because they talk and since their movements are predefined and they don't care for you you can exit a dialogue only for them to instantly touch you and trigger it again I genuinely thought I was stuck at points as I have to mash through a conversation multiple times until they decide to change direction and as thanks we're given furs allowing us to live in colder climates away from these chat boxes narrative Lee this chapter is really cool we're traveling the land helping others and expanding our knowledge mechanically it adds an item menu to bowels these are equippable that just give us access to the same status effects we already had they don't cost help to use but since they cost a turn to equip they cost health to use we also line about UFOs or fo seeing as Geyer identifies them as Lunarian ships varying tens of thousands of moon men at the end of a 200 million year journey then the ships blow up in the sky headed east and west Geyer isn't sure why so she opens up Shambala to let us inspect them yeah you know Shambala it turns out it's just a connecting passageway between atlantis and mew the Atlantean Lunarians are a warlike tribe with cannons primed to fire on Mew they have sworn allegiance to Lucifer I can't do anything here no sabotaging the cannons no talking them out of it and since I'm just a dumb animal I guess they just let me wander around but then what are you going to question a Gorgon meanwhile in new we eavesdrop on a panicked meeting between the leaders before the king comes in to make a decision well it's a good thing this guy's wearing the crown they go back and forth on whether to retaliate before the king decides it's wrong for any Lunarian to be on earth ultimately the planet should belong to the creatures who evolved along with it the Atlanteans begin their attack the king urges his people to flee then he hits a switch to sink Atlantis and mutant while everyone buggers off guy is thankful and we learn a valuable lesson in not interfering it's time to talk about spirit science now spirit science is one of those cult figs and scams like this tend to be litigious so I should watch what I say it functions like a best-of collection of New Age beliefs a hot pot of hocus-pocus a stockpile of Shiki nuri if you want to do your own research spirit science has a YouTube channel but I'll stick to the interesting and relevant bits spirit science was formed in 2011 but is based heavily on the writings of Zecharia Sitchin so this is the leave the planet that remains you know a bit and that guy had been running his hustle since the 70s and while I'm unsure how inspired Kalamata was I mean after all the guy's a sci-fi author imagination comes with the territory there is a lot of odd overlap it's not impossible he was at least aware since Sitchin's writings made their way to japan and had a small impact shortly after the game I was shown the hidden human history watching a video is a drive-by assault on the senses the Lemurian body of consciousness had only reached the age of 12 as a planetary consciousness because we were right brained we were a female species every time it seems like the video is losing steam it will up the ante on insanity like it's nothing and keep going there was a time long ago when humans existed at a very high level of consciousness we were interred in Allah and were very psychic we communicated through thought and emotion much like how animals do rather than speaking or writing psychic communication between animals huh and despite being one of the less anti-semitic cults I've seen it still posits that Hebrews came from space what adilyn Aryans have a golem a piece of Jewish folklore in Evo the Martians were corrupted and made violent by Lucifer in spirit science they were led astray by the Lucifer experiment before coming to earth there's also Lemuria also known as Moo sinking this raised Atlantis were honored in this game Lemuria sunk both Lemuria sunk because we reached a higher level of consciousness which well I mean the King had a revelation before it sank you always need to find your own spin and I know Atlantis Lemuria Lucifer the Martians these are all old hat part of many stories but both evo and spirit science bring them together now I'm not gullible rich person with too much free time a sense of existential dread or money to get past the taxman so I don't know much New Age stuff so maybe this stuff just all comes up a ton in these writings but hey once again theory of evolution got me doing research and made me want to spew a bunch of weird stuff I learned recently also the moon is hollow so I gained wisdom but also racked up a bunch of insanity points we wake up on an unknown Beach and Lucifer must have heard the rumpus because she's back and she's pissed pissed off enough to challenge us to single combat on the southwest continent and considering I just found Britain again that's probably Africa you know the back story has really oversold Lucifer she's having an off millenia that back story has her deceiving and destroying civilized peoples meanwhile she's basically trying and failing to squash a bug it's embarrassing that we're not dead as we fight through the elephant mountain maze of Africa and the and a fool tells us something fell on the southern plateau it's there that one of Lucifer's imps tells us to head to Stonehenge and after realizing it was probably in the door behind him I head back yep one last teleporter maze it's got a pretty cool unique enemy and I come to well a henge made of stone but where's Lucifer once again it's a maze of flags and Lucifer is late she won't turn up until we find a tablet filled with magic spells given to us by the Creator these spells do things we could already do but the flavor text is longer with this with blessed with wisdom which is strange I for already max that out this chapter okay here again lucifer seeing we have the tablet decides to take this fight seriously and reveals her true form i'll admit that got a jump out of me the first time the art is just really cool overall the fight starts and it's a bit of a shame it uses the standard battle music we finally have a boss fight it could have kept running Lucifer's theme and it would have been stronger and well this fight is a bastard for whatever reason in spite of a combat system I kept wanting a boss fight and I must have made a deal with the devil because here we are [Music] she deals insane damage I am maybe a turn or two away from death at all times not to mention all of her attacks of specials with really wordy descriptions so her turns are slow it just drags everything out like die a lot and I consider turning the text speed up but that's terrifying because I know a cutscene will follow this and when you turn that up it becomes really easy to accidentally skip dialogue I don't want to miss any story it's what I'm here for eventually I realize I can't take a moment to fight back and she's using specials so I'll just let her tire herself out then when she's on the edge of [Music] well okay this will take longer when she's weak I'll just go in with a killer blow this isn't a foolproof plan if she picks the right attacks in a row I'm dead anyway but this proved far safer than actually trying to fight and eventually that opening came my way [Music] Lucifer humiliated swears revenge and flees the planet Gaia is amazed by our victory amazed that with the tablet we have the blessing of the Creator she tells us to head to Eden we've completed the 4.6 billion year or deal oh come on Gaia the gameplay sucked I wouldn't call this an ordeal in the Garden of Eden baby a woman has already ascended to homo sapien and it's time to join her we place the tablet on a nearby altar and Gaia grants us the power to evolve hmm was this chapter been pushing us towards this hold sign based on that fight has to be endurance I love this moment so dearly this chapter is one of the most essential parts of our coming into being and now at the birth of mankind what should be a powerful moment for the player you can choose to [ __ ] it up and make the whole thing of fasts again this chapters incredible imagine the look on her face as instead of becoming a man we turn into a bearded dwarf and start bonking things yeah you have to pick wisdom and then guy in two parts and the to head off to lead the planet we Ross which path we lead humanity down I wonder all but the right choice have unique bad endings you get to fake choices back to back and these endings are amazing if we take humanity in an attack direction we destroy ourselves in nuclear hellfire game over if we take humanity in a vitality direction we become an overpopulated polluting party race are being drunkenly staggers through a megalopolis I don't know how to say that and for a moment has nostalgic force of early Earth and where did we go wrong before pushing these depressing force from our head and disappearing into the crowd game over if we take humanity in an endurance direction humanity overcomes each and every problem it faces stabilizes the environment and is now populating the Stars pushing further and further into space owing to our hardiness and intelligence but the main characters disappointed game over what I guess in that ending we may have been ignoring what we learned in MU but still that's the most optimistic bad ending I've ever seen okay well having experienced all of that I'm a lot wiser oh we're not done yet [Music] so 60,000 years and some drama later wait 60,000 humanity has become a planet-wide spiritual civilization under one government ah anime the apex of evolution oh my you lot did not go on did you so now we lead the psychic peoples of Earth and hey the fantasy chapter 5 is canon judging by the homo Dino still wandering about we have a premonition of the devil returning so we call the sages and head for the southern plateau for our final showdown it's weird everything that's happening is insane but it's working there's no music just wind rushing there's a sense of foreboding here well there goes London our followers look on in worry as we approach the space lift begging us not to go I really love our internal narration calling these people we've never known a good bunch something about that coming from a being there's billions of years old I don't know it somehow feels like it means something though my favorite is this guy here who says we have it all wrong that we've only evolved because of Lucifer's meddling she's our shadow and you can't fight your shadow in a way he's right but you really going to be a downer right now well with a leader of humanity so we just ignore him and get on the left the sage is linked up with us and I love the little image we get of the world as they call in most everyone just confirms where they are but the European representative goes with where the acid rains never stop I'm really thinking the endurance ending was the bell one the devil appears and starts tearing the world asunder in an instant the sages are killed and their psychic energies being sent to us severed we try and fight on regardless but we can't make a dent and despite being smashed to pieces we're not dead Gaia returns to tell us our spiritual body is still alive and the devil seeing Gaia decides to show us what she's done to her sister the moon isn't filled with hydraulics it's got a giant monster inside Gaia has a twist in return she's the earth yeah I guess that she was ordered to hide until we had grown enough and the time is now so to defeat the devil she grants us the energy of every being has ever lived on earth not to be outdone the devil summons the power of every planet fees destroyed and the final battle begins you know this is the first time I played a game gone to the end and really had to think man what a [ __ ] journey we started off killing jellyfish 500 million years ago and now we're an incorporeal being of light for a metaphorical dinosaur power a demon bug that crawled out of the moon it's pretty cool such freedom could quite get me thinking like this it's a very easy fight mind the only challenge is learning what each of our attacks actually do which takes a turn but hey I can't knock this on spectacle what an adventure this has been sure it was long and often boring but I'm happy to have experienced such an oddity and after a long fought battle we smashed the devil into atomic trash [Music] [Music] lucifer maybe b-but we have nobody to return to our consciousness merges with gyres and we hear the terror of the people back on earth i can't blame them for being unsure what just happened gaia lets us speak into everyone's minds calming them down before she interrupts with the dumbest thing i've ever read [Music] wait what do you mean physical evolution ends here and now Oh sod it we won and so the earth raves not quite a pale blue dot and that concludes our 9.2 billion year journey both of the Evo titles are unique beasts filled with unique beasts filled with gas lighting NPCs unintentional stupidity a lot of boring gameplay loaded with Jack with absurd approaches to gamifying and making a narrative out of evolution their odd entries at the Canon of RPGs but are loaded head to toe with charm theory of evolution is a game of lower lows and higher highs than search for Eden the gameplay much more dull and dragged out I kept playing because I had sealed a creatures and uncovered the bunkers plot I had to know where that story was going and I had no idea it was into space I'm not disappointed I can't think of many bear ways to spend millions of years in 11 hours evolution as a gameplay mechanic is still something I feel is an underserved nature and I don't think any game has ever really nailed it it seems like a nice die Jake way to handle a leveling system but obviously the reality is not so simple every game I've played incorporating it gets a different aspect right but usually does it make for a great overall experience Evo is probably as fascinating as it has gotten I'll be glad to be proven wrong in spite of the absurdity and the fact this is obviously not a science lesson I can imagine evil was great for getting young players interested in evolution and learning the reality for themselves I just hope no one ever took either gamers have real stab at a creation myth and to top it all off and go back to that forward I think I do appreciate existence a little bit more after playing Kalamata so thanks for that I mean except for the part where we're not home Oh Dino sapien and I'm pretty sure I'm never gonna make a video that covers a longer span of time but it's nice to have an upper limit and I should close off of a thank you to the translation team for letting us experience this odd Odyssey of life fantastic work this was - snake run if you want to support me in making more videos like this you can spread this one around if you want to support me more directly I have a patreon and a cofee coffee I have no idea how it said the lovely people scrolling past have donated patrons get access to our patreon discord everyone gets facts a $3 you get access to my scripts and notes and at five get access to after four videos where I round off my forts on the game anything that didn't make it into the video proper and I also fewer questions and test things out in the game that I'm asked to I hope to see you all next time [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Tehsnakerer

Views: 741,045

Rating: 4.9398155 out of 5

Keywords: e.v.o. search for eden, E.V.O., evo search for eden, evo, playing evo, e.v.o review, evo review, e.v.o. the theory of evolution, e.v.o. theory of evolution review, SNES jrpg, pc-98, evo analysis, evo critique, evo playthrough, game review, spore, e.v.o. search for eden review, theory of evolution, spirit science, Koichi Sugiyama, RPG review, PC-98 Game

Id: M5fIGlzDGpY

Length: 87min 49sec (5269 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 23 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Such neat, weird game. I find it insane no one has made some indie successor to it yet. I think the evolution mechanic could work really well today, you could combine it with procedural generation or something, even. It just seems like it could work really well into todays indie scene.

Gimme my E.V.O./Spore combo already!

[u/realme857]

I loved E.V.O.

I really wish the game got a modern version.

Odd how Tehsnakerer calls evolving to get your health back an exploit when it's really a necessary game mechanic.

[u/ifindhardittochoose]

Played this game many years ago: I thought it was a really creative idea and I really wanted to see the ending to see how the creature evolved. While most of the evolutionary adds weren't that useful in the end, the fact you could create really unique looking creatures made it fun.